Friday, May 25, 2012

Third Batch of Friday Free Books 5-25-2012

These books are free at the time of posting. Amazon.com changes their prices all the time so before you click on the download button, make sure the price for the Kindle Edition (not the Prime Members cost) is $0.00 or £0.00. Now on to the books . . .

Award winning short story collection that captures pivotal moments—of childhood, adolescence, parenthood, and beyond--in the under-appreciated world of women. Disparate decades, genders, and narrative voices woven together by themes of sex, death, guilt, social prejudice.

And love, always love.

A girl discovers a fear of heights as her parents’ marriage unravels; a thirty-something venture fund manager frets over his daughter’s paternity; an orphan whose hands kill whatever they touch is accused of homophobia; a suicidal daycare worker has a very bad day; a mother of two can only bear to consider abortion in the second person; the wife of a retirement-aged professor finds him unconscious near his computer. The 14 stories of The Meaning Of Children speak to all who—though aware the world can be a very dark place—can’t help but long for redemption.

Winner of the David Adams Richards Prize; Top 10 List of the CBC – Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers’ Choice Contest, and many others.

It's 1921. Cleo Snow travels with her cousin, Neill Connolly, to Sago Island, Ga. to lessen the sadness of her fiance's death in The Great War (later called World War I). He'd been missing, presumed killed in France, and his body recently returned home.

America's victory celebration is in full swing. The Flapper Era has begun. Cleo is poised between her Victorian raising and post-war liberal ideas. Women got the vote in 1920. They work – Cleo’s a nurse. Hemlines are rising. Jargon is spicier. Songs are racier. The fox trot is the cat’s meow. Everyone smokes coffin nails. The great experiment, Prohibition, has ushered in an era of fascinating gangsters and illegal speakeasies. Drinking and dancing go together like bathtub gin and painted dolls.

On Sago Island Cleo meets fly-boy hero Graham Henry, the dazzling son of a steel magnate. They fall in love dancing to "Whispering", the rage song of the year. Complicating their love-at-first-sight is Shafer and Josie Drake. Shafer is Graham's cousin. He lost his liquor business and is about to lose his money-loving wife, Josie.

The morning after the dance, Josie is missing. A note she purportedly wrote says she's leaving the island to get a divorce and marry Graham. Graham swears the note's a lie and that he and Josie were nothing more than friends.

Where did Josie go and when? Did she return to New York where she danced in the Ziegfeld Follies? No one saw her leave the island. But Cleo knows Graham had nothing to do with her disappearance because Cleo was with him in the lighthouse the night Josie vanished. Cleo vows she will never confess to making love with a man she's known only two days. But Will Graham compromise Cleo to clear himself?

Island resident, the enigmatic Doc Holliday, who claims to be related to the infamous gunslinger, is a veterinarian and a falconer. His falcon, Billy, captures Cleo’s severely crushed heart. Cleo captures Doc’s heart, but she’s reeling over her gullibility and her body’s occasional betrayal of her resolve. Will he win her with his darkly sensuous charm?

Everyone on Sago, it seems, has something to hide, even villagers who distill homemade hooch - and it all pivots around Josie and Graham. With her spirit firmed by deceit, Cleo vows to uncover the truth and keep her own secret..

Ranealya ruthlessly plays by the rules and has outlived most of her race because of it. If she wants to survive, she'll have to stick to them, especially with a genocidal tyrant hell-bent on destroying all the non-humans in the realm. But everything falls apart when a human saves her life.

Gregor knows he's inviting trouble when he helps a wounded shape-shifter, but he can't pass up the opportunity to study one before they become extinct. She disturbs the quiet order of his scholarly existence, vexes him in more ways than he can count, and encourages him to break enough of the kingdom's laws so that not even being the king's cousin will save his head. The problem is, he's already lost his heart.

Detective Lara Mendes’s hard work finally pays off when she gets the chance to join the homicide detail. There’s only one catch; she has to partner up with a cop no one wants to work with.

John Gallagher is a veteran homicide detective who loves stomping bad guys and hates partners. When the Lieutenant saddles him with this green kid named Mendes, his first reaction is to ditch her but a call comes in about a body on the river bank and the rotation says they’re up.

What they find are human remains, mutilated and partially devoured. Their investigation reveals a killer stalking the city with a pack of vicious, feral dogs.
And the suspect believes he is a werewolf.

But this is Portland, where crazy bastards outnumber normal ones ten to one. Except there’s another catch. The crazy werewolf guy? He isn’t crazy...